I'd like to suggest the following improvements to the multi-category search feature:

Allow for searches by number of voices without requiring a sub-category, or allow for multiple sub-categories to be selected. For example, if I'm looking for 3-part mixed voices, I would like to get the results for SAB, SAT, STB, and ATB without having to do multiple searches.

Include a text search within the multi-category search, so that folks can search for all SAB sacred works with the word "Alleluia" in the title.

Include the composer, arranger and/or lyricists nationality as a search feature, if this is available in the database. If it isn't, can we add it?

LadyIslay wrote:Allow for searches by number of voices without requiring a sub-category, or allow for multiple sub-categories to be selected.

We already had plans to change this; a couple of tests have been made and it's pending just a couple of minor adaptations in order to be implemented.

LadyIslay wrote:Include a text search within the multi-category search, so that folks can search for all SAB sacred works with the word "Alleluia" in the title.

This feature is already available! Use the keyword field for textual search. (Perhaps "keyword" is not very intuitive...)

LadyIslay wrote:Include the composer, arranger and/or lyricists nationality as a search feature, if this is available in the database. If it isn't, can we add it?

Most composers and arrangers do have a nationality indicated in their pages (a few are still unknown); we had not planned to add this information for lyricists but this can be changed. If you just want to find a composer from a specific country, you can browse the category "composers by nationality" as an alternative:

I agree that it would be good to clarify in the form what Keyword refers to.

More confusingly, it appears to be case-sensitive, which is counter-intuitive to people. I was confused by this just today, in fact. It returned zero hits when I asked for Sacred, 4-part, SATB, a cappella, with keyword indicating ave maria. At first, I thought it must be broken, but then it occurred to me to try a case-sensitive search and that worked.

I think we should make it case-insensitive by default. Even if we were to specify that it is case-sensitive, users would not find it useful to guess at the varying ways something might have been capitalized. If we wanted to be even more accomodating, we could put a box next to it for people to check if they want the search case-sensitive instead.

vaarky wrote:I agree that it would be good to clarify in the form what Keyword refers to.

Hi Vaarky, in the instructions on top of the page there is a note explaining its use:

** Use the Keyword field to search for any word contained within the work title or composer name. Note that it is case-sensitive, therefore searching for 'bach' or 'Bach' will yield different results.

vaarky wrote:I think we should make it case-insensitive by default.

That would be great, but it wasn't our choice to make it case-sensitive, it's a limitation of the DPL command used to fetch the results ("titlematch"). Anyway, I'll see if anything can be done in this respect.

It would be nice to entirely revise the multi-category search implementation in such a way that it makes use of the plain HTML code rather than the MediaWiki Simple Forms extension. The Simple Forms extension doesn't work with newer versions of the MediaWiki software, so it is preventing us to upgrade to up-to-date versions. I think that plain HTML code would also allow more flexibility for additional features.